City has turned water payment standoff into 'us vs. them'

Monday

May 13, 2013 at 12:01 AM

By JOHN MONTGOMERYFor the Herald-Journal

By now, you have heard of the controversy between the Commission of Public Works and Spartanburg City Council over a proposed $1.2 million transfer of water ratepayer funds to City Council. City Council has chosen to provide misleading and disingenuous information about this issue that forces this to become an "us vs. them" debate where there would be one "winner" and one "loser."The truth is that both City Council and the CPW represent the same people — the residents of Spartanburg — and we need to work together to find a solution that serves the interests of this great community and the needs of our residents for generations to come. As a member of the commission and the father of three young children, I am honor bound to do just that.Economic development and a strong tax base benefit every resident of the community — both inside and outside the city — because of the financial foundation it provides for schools, infrastructure, public hospitals and other critical services. Attracting business and industry to grow our tax base requires remaining competitive with our neighbors across the Upstate. Water rates play a key role in that competitive edge, and raising them has much broader implications than City Council would have you believe.The typical industrial customer located outside the city will pay an additional $34,490 next year to cover the proposed transfer to City Council. When combined with the other increases necessary to operate and invest in the water system, that industrial customer will pay $112,092 more next year. If we are forced to raise rates as City Council suggests, it will compromise our community's ability to attract jobs in the future.A well-maintained and carefully planned water system is a key component of a healthy local economy. The Spartanburg Area Chamber of Commerce attributes nearly $9 in capital investment locally for every $1 spent by CPW in water system re-investment. That means every dollar of water ratepayer funds that is not re-invested in the water system has a direct and negative impact on our ability to create jobs and expand the tax base. Since 1992 when the transfer began, water customers have contributed more than $17 million of their ratepayer' funds to City Council. During this time, City Council has raised concerns about its shrinking tax base and its inability to annex to expand city limits. While recognizing City Council's challenges, I do not believe that raiding the water system and forcing water rate increases to cover the short-term operating needs of the city is an effective way to address the problem. The community would be better served with City Council taking a broader and longer-term look at the problem to develop a sustainable solution. One proposed idea is to work with CPW to annex and grow the city limits, which we are happy to discuss. Instead, City Council has confused the mission of a CPW, viewing the entity as a piggy bank rather than a separate agency established to ensure that the residents of this community have the water they need in order to live, work and prosper. Some communities have chosen a municipal utility structure where water ratepayer funds flow freely into a city or county's general revenue budgets (often to the detriment of those systems), but the Spartanburg community decided more than 100 years ago to create a CPW to draw a bold line separating politics and the water system's resources. In fact, the transfer of funds to City Council did not occur for the first 80 years of the CPW's existence.The fact is that CPW recognizes that we are stewards not only of the $5 million per year in water sales from inside city customers but also the $26 million per year in water sales from customers outside the city. While residents of the city own the water system, their neighbors in the county have contributed the bulk of the funding for reservoirs, treatment plants and other infrastructure built to serve this community.To ignore this fact is neither reasonable nor constructive. City Council's expectation that water ratepayers outside the city should be unduly burdened to supplement its budget ignores the fact that doing that threatens the success of this community as a whole. CPW has proposed a transfer that equals more than $6.5 million over the next seven years. This protects the water system and assists City Council with the legitimate needs it has to provide other services. I pledge to you that the CPW board will continue to extend a hand of cooperation to City Council and other government bodies across our community.Difficult decisions are rarely popular, but leadership means doing what is right not only for today but for the future. I am confident that moving the discussion away from the immediate needs of City Council and the CPW toward what "we" as a community need to foster our growth will help us collectively decide what is right both for all of us today and for our children tomorrow.John Montgomery is a member of the Commission of Public Works.

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